Terry Bumper

Introduction

Terry Bumper is a former food services director at the International School of Monterey, a publicly funded K-8 charter school in Seaside, California, charged with felony embezzlement after investigators say he diverted roughly $58,800 in school food money into his private catering business. The case broke open, police say, because of a single suspiciously large Costco breakfast order — eggs, bacon and potatoes — that a school administrator refused to wave through. The examination that followed swept up a second, larger alleged embezzlement by the school’s chief financial officer, Rosa Segura, though police say the two cases appear unconnected.

Background Information

Bumper, 42, joined the school as food services director in 2022 and quickly became a local success story: a 2025 Edible Monterey Bay profile credited him with transforming “an unpopular heat-and-serve lunch program into a from-scratch operation” using locally grown produce, doubling student participation and cutting program costs in half. “Everyone loves what Terry’s doing, hands down,” the school’s head of operations, Lisa Wichel Loomis, told the publication at the time. “We haven’t heard a single complaint.” In 2023, according to SFGate, he founded a Southern-comfort-food catering company, Flava 2 You — the business prosecutors now say school funds fed. Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges said the alleged misconduct dates to at least 2022, when Bumper was brought on.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged — not tried. Bumper faces one felony embezzlement count filed by the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office; he has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless and until proven convicted. The dollar figures in this section are investigators’ allegations, not court findings. The separate allegations against Rosa Segura are hers alone: she was arrested but has not been charged, and nothing attributed to either person has been adjudicated in court.

On August 12, 2026, the International School of Monterey reported a possible embezzlement involving one employee to the Seaside Police Department. The tip that reached police involved a bizarre invoice: a Costco breakfast order for eggs, bacon and potatoes that struck a school administrator as exorbitant for the event it covered. “This isn’t like they ordered a little too much,” Borges told SFGATE. “It was absolutely excessive.” Detectives identified Bumper as the suspect and allege he used school funds to order food products — seafood, spicy foods and other items that never appeared on student trays but did appear on Flava 2 You’s catering menu — for his personal business, embezzling about $58,800. Police further allege he rented out the school’s kitchens for personal profit, accepting Venmo payments from people who needed a large cooking facility for special events.

Bumper was arrested September 24, 2026, on suspicion of felony embezzlement, and the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office formally filed one felony embezzlement count against him on October 20. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, posted $20,000 bail, and has denied the charges: “I did everything I could for them kids, and I would never steal from them kids,” he told Monterey County NOW, saying his only responsibility was ordering food for the school and that every order required sign-off from someone else. He denies routing any money to Flava 2 You, which closed around the time of his arrest, and says his coworker Segura held final approval over all orders. “I have no support right now,” he told the outlet. “Nobody believes me.”

The second case surfaced while detectives were examining Bumper’s spending: the school reported a separate suspected embezzlement by chief financial officer Rosa Segura, 45, who is accused of siphoning about $238,000 — more than quadruple Bumper’s alleged take — for personal expenses including luxury hotel stays, massages, salon and Pilates classes, Tesla charging, food delivery, restaurants and online shopping, and, per Borges, forging administrators’ signatures on checks and using school credit cards. “She made Bumper look like a saint the way she was ripping off the school,” Borges told the Los Angeles Times. Segura was arrested October 22 on suspicion of felony embezzlement, posted bail, and has not yet been formally charged; a search warrant in her case remains pending.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case drew wide coverage for how it started — a Costco receipt — and for the scale beneath it: the two investigations total roughly $296,800 of public charter-school money. Borges framed both cases as a betrayal of trust: “There’s something about this level of theft that really gets under my skin… You are ripping off not just the school, not just the kids; it’s taxpayer dollars — you are ripping everybody off,” he told the Times, adding of the years-long patterns, “This is not something that just happened once or twice… This is years of complete fraud.” Both former employees are no longer employed by the school, which did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment. Police say they have found no evidence Bumper and Segura worked together or knew of each other’s alleged conduct, and stress the two cases remain separate and ongoing.

Current Status

Bumper has been charged with one count of felony embezzlement and pleaded not guilty; his case is pending in Monterey County court, and he says he plans to fight it. Segura’s case, the larger of the two, sits with the district attorney’s office awaiting a charging decision while a search warrant remains outstanding. Both investigations are active, and neither case has reached trial — no conviction exists against either former school employee.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Bumper’s standing in Seaside flipped completely in a year: the chef once credited with making the school’s lunches beloved, and publicly praised by his own administration, is now a charged felon out on $20,000 bail whose catering business has closed. Whatever the court decides, the investigation he triggered expanded into an alleged $296,800 betrayal of a small charter school — and he maintains he is the man who fed the kids, not the one who robbed them: “I did my best,” he told Monterey County NOW.

Sources

New York Post, “California school staffers busted in huge fraud after Costco breakfast run blows their cover”, Nov. 1, 2026. source
SFGate, “‘Excessive’ Costco breakfast purchase unravels alleged $300K Calif. school fraud”, Oct. 31, 2026. source
Los Angeles Times, “Exorbitant egg order at Monterey school cracks open ‘disgusting’ embezzlement scheme, police say”, Oct. 30, 2026. source
KSBW, “Former school employees accused of embezzling nearly $300,000”, Oct. 2026. source
Monterey County NOW, “Two Accused of Embezzling $300K From Monterey School”, Oct. 29, 2026. source
Hoodline, “Police Investigate Separate Financial Misconduct Cases at Seaside Charter School”, Oct. 31, 2026. source
@nypost on X, trigger post, Nov. 1, 2026. source